The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living helps tackle new year’s resolutions and find joy and contentment in the new year

Newswise — ROCHESTER, Minn. — Jan. 2, 2014 — Americans will start the New Year with resolutions that are doomed to fail if they don’t deal with the underlying issue of stress before they join a gym, start a diet or throw the cigarettes away. Research shows that stress negatively impacts our ability to lose weight, quit smoking and stick with a new healthy lifestyle change.

In The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living, Mayo Clinic stress management and resiliency expert Amit Sood, M.D., draws on decades of groundbreaking research to offer readers a scientifically proven, structured and practical approach to reducing stress. He explains the brain’s two modes — focused mode and default mode — and how an imbalance between the two produces unwanted stress, and he shares newBook cover Mayo Clinic's Guide to Stress-Free Living, with female doing cartwheel insights about how the mind works, including its natural tendency to wander. In this easy-to-follow guide, Dr. Sood provides actionable steps to cultivate emotional and mental strength, find greater fulfillment and nurture a kind disposition.

The book answers:

What is unique about stress in the 21st century?How is stress linked to the wandering nature of our mind?Why do the most-commonly-taught practices for stress management help only a small proportion of people?What real-world skills work to decrease our stress levels and enhance our resiliency?How can we apply these skills to goals for weight loss, smoking cessation and other behavior changes?The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living encapsulates these concepts, techniques and personal stories into a way that will bring you closer to a state of personal fulfillment and a stress-free existence — and much more likely to stick to those resolutions this year. The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living will be available wherever books are sold Jan. 1, 2014 ($19.99, Paperback Original, 288 Pages, ISBN: 978-0-7382-1712-3).

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About Mayo ClinicMayo Clinic is a nonprofit worldwide leader in medical care, research and education for people from all walks of life. For more information, visit www.mayoclinic.com and www.mayoclinic.org/news.

About Amit Sood, M.D., M.Sc.Dr. Sood is a professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic and is the director of Research and Practice for the Mayo Clinic Complementary and Integrative Medicine (CIM) Program. He chairs the Mayo Clinic Mind-Body Medicine Initiative and is a fellow of the American College of Physicians. He develops and teaches innovative approaches to improve stress and wellness. Dr. Sood has received several National Institutes of Health (NIH) and foundation grants for research in integrative and mind-body approaches to promote well-being. He provides mind-body consults to patients at Mayo Clinic and, with his programs, has helped over 50,000 people in the past five years. Dr. Sood has received numerous awards and has authored or co-authored more than 60 peer-reviewed original articles, as well as editorials, abstracts, book chapters and books. He has developed award-winning patient education DVDs as well as the first Mayo Clinic iPhone app (an introductory meditation training program), and is a highly sought-after speaker, teaching over 50 workshops a year.